Breaking News: The NCAA Selection Committee is under investigation after suspect actions on Selection Sunday.
On March 18th, 2024, the NCAA Selection Committee submitted their official votes for the teams chosen to compete in March Madness. Out of the 68 teams included in the tournament, 32 of those earned automatic bids with a conference win, leaving the other 36 to be selected by the committee and seeded alongside the auto-bids. Here are the schools who earned automatic bids:
And here is the full bracket:
To casual fans, this looks like a standard bracket; but to a trained eye, there are glaring issues with both the seedings and teams that received a bid.
First off, notice how the champions of the four best conferences (Big East, Big 12, Big 10, SEC) all landed in the same quadrant (East). Also, three of the Final Four teams from last year are in the Eastern quardrant too (UCONN, San Diego State, FAU). What kind of lunatic does it take to do that?
Next up, after a quarterfinal exit in the Big 10 Tournament and a 19-14 record, Michigan State miraculously landed a 9 seed. Let me say that one more time: Michigan State (19-14) is a 9 seed in March Madness. Not only that, but they only won 5 out of their last 10 matchups. They also only beat two teams who were ranked in the top 25 all season.
After examining all of the evidence, I have come to the conclusion that Michigan State was only selected for one reason: Tom Izzo.
Now, I am not a Tom Izzo hater in any sense of the word. I think he is one of the greatest coaches of our time, and for that reason alone this shitty Michigan State team was given a charity donation to this year’s draft. If Tom Izzo wasn’t Michigan State’s head coach, and if those accolades listed in the above Tweet weren’t at risk, there’s no shot that this team makes the playoffs.
Now onto: Boise State.
This team didn’t really have any bad losses this year, had a difficult out of conference schedule where they did well, yet they find themselves in the first four. To add to this, San Diego State, a team that Boise State beat twice this season, found themselves sitting pretty with a five seed. Someone make this make sense!
However, in my (completely biased) opinion, one team had it worse than Boise, and it’s their opponent in the first four matchup: Colorado.
That’s right, CU landed in the first four after reaching the Pac-12 Championship and winning 8 straight before the loss to Oregon (who they beat twice this season). Boulder also beat Washington State in the Pac-12 Semifinal. And what seed did WSU receive? A 7 seed. Take a look at the net rankings too:
You’re telling me a team ranked 25th in the country at the season’s end doesn’t land in the tournament? There are 28 spots, and many of the teams ranked higher on the NET were automatic bids! What kind of math are we doing here? (SEC by the looks of it).
Lasty, Dayton secured a 7 seed while placing third in the Atlantic 10 Conference and losing in the quarterfinal of their tournament. They recorded zero impressive wins, their only one to note was against St. John’s, who mind you aren’t even in the tournament. Dayton deserves a 7 seed about as much as I deserve a 7 figure job coming out of college. But if they got it, maybe I can too (No, I definitely can not).
The whole selection committee process needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. It’s like the people they have at the moment watch no college basketball whatsoever, and have no idea how you should rank teams. Burn it all down, and like a phoenix rising from the ashes, a new age of college basketball will be born.